With just three or five short words, depending on which translation we use, Jesus Christ showed that there are important lessons to learn from reading and meditating on the Bible account of the wife of Lot. So what important lessons can we learn from Lot’s wife?

Here are some important life lessons, especially for us that are living in the “last days.”

1) Lot’s wife was disobedient. (Read Genesis 19:1-27 for the full account) She did not obey the instructions given by the angels to look straight ahead and not look behind at the things that were left in Sodom. Was it just the act of looking back? No, she obviously was looking back longingly at the things she had been forced to leave behind. Genesis 19:26 (King James Version) “But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.”

We too need to look straight ahead to the reward that God will give us. This wicked world, just like Sodom and Gomorrah, is also destined for destruction. (See 1 John 2:15-17) It is of no lasting value to get too comfortable is this quick-changing world full of uncertainty. We are only in this world for a short time. Our goal is the kingdom of God!

2) Lot’s wife had become too attached to her material possessions and the comfortable life in the materially rich but spiritually poor city of Sodom. Lot’s wife had escaped but she had left her heart with the material things back in Sodom. (See Matthew 6:21)

Today, being a Christian or a servant of God calls for sacrifices, for not making ourselves too comfortable in this old world. We never know when we too will have to leave everything behind and just run with only the shirt on our back.

3) Jesus showed that in the “last days” there would be similar circumstances to the days of Lot and that the danger would be that we could get attached to material things more than spiritual riches. People in the days of Lot were immoral and materialistic and focused their lives on eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, and building. They paid no attention to the warnings of Lot and thought that he was only joking about the imminent destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighbouring cities until fire and sulphur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.

Luke 17:28-32 (Young’s Literal Translation) “in like manner also, as it came to pass in the days of Lot; they were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building; and on the day Lot went forth from Sodom, He rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed all. `According to these things it shall be, in the day the Son of Man is revealed; in that day, he who shall be on the house top, and his vessels in the house, let him not come down to take them away; and he in the field, in like manner, let him not turn backward; remember the wife of Lot.

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4) What good are material things without life? Our life is our most precious possession and our future life in the kingdom of God our most important goal. We should be willing to lose anything and everything to obtain a place in God’s kingdom arrangement.

There are important lessons that we can learn from the mistakes made by Lot’s wife. May we learn the lessons well! It would be very foolish of us and it would result in a great loss if we neglected Jesus’ dire warning: remember the wife of Lot!

Thanks for sharing. We can leaarn a LOT from LOT’s wife. Luke 9:62 “And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Philippians 3:13,14 “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Isa. 43:18,19 adds “Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old.
Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.”

Very good article. We all have to try to be ready for God, and sometimes it becomes very difficult to see just how much we are like Lot’s wife. We think we are doing good, but then something catches our eyes and we want it, so we buy it and take it home, not telling ourselves at the time “You can’t take it with you.” Treasures here on earth will destroy us, if we don’t put them in their place.
We have to ask ourselves if we are ready to obey, if God told us to drop everything and run. If the answer is no, then we need to change.